I’m considering creating a Linkedin profile. I probably should have made one long ago, but, because of my severe social anxiety and a visceral reaction to any activity which involves selling myself, I have avoided it. However, I think it’s probably best to bite the bullet and work through creating the profile and to at least send connection requests to people who I am currently working with. However, first I’d like to know if it looks bad to have a profile with only a few connections. Is that worse than having no profile at all?
I dont think it is a problem to have few connections. Everyone starts with zero connections at the start, and many (if not most?) people only use it occasionally.
I think it will become more valuable in the future for employment, as it does provide a fairly easy ‘living resume’, that potential employers can see; so make your work history well written and polished (as it, treat it exactly like a resume).
Having a profile, even a new one, will almost certainly be a net positive over not having one, and it just gets better.
It’s worth noting that while a few people do actually use LI as a social network (with the joining groups and posting statuses/comments/links and so on), and that there may be a benefit of doing so if you’re actively job hunting (gets your name out more), most people seem to just basically treat it as a “here’s my employability credentials, click that button to message me with offers” site. It works too; I get regular offers despite having almost no activity on the site and indicating that I’m currently employed. It doesn’t seem to have Facebook’s “gotta have all the friends!” mentality so much, though.
You’ll probably find that connections will grow quickly. Pretty much any recruiter—either at a career fair or similar, or a headhunter looking for people online—will offer to connect, and it’s generally fine to connect with all your current colleagues and any past ones that have/had a non-negative association with you. I’ve got connections through my current employer, my past employers including internships, friends and faculty from university, people I met through my work (admittedly, as a consultant, I work with a lot of people in my field but outside of my company), people I met at conferences, and various recruiters who’ve tried to rope me in. Almost all of them added me first, not the other way around.
Be aware that it’s really easy to leak info that you would want to keep private. A few years ago, there were a bunch of interesting leaks out of big tech companies when employees posted stuff that they were working on before it became public. Yeah, you shouldn’t put still-confidential stuff on your resume anyhow, but much worse when it’s publicly searchable on the Internet...
This is not a legitimate concern (that is, “the way opposes your fear”). No one’s judging anyone (as far as I know) on the basis of how many connections they have.
I’m considering creating a Linkedin profile. I probably should have made one long ago, but, because of my severe social anxiety and a visceral reaction to any activity which involves selling myself, I have avoided it. However, I think it’s probably best to bite the bullet and work through creating the profile and to at least send connection requests to people who I am currently working with. However, first I’d like to know if it looks bad to have a profile with only a few connections. Is that worse than having no profile at all?
I dont think it is a problem to have few connections. Everyone starts with zero connections at the start, and many (if not most?) people only use it occasionally.
I think it will become more valuable in the future for employment, as it does provide a fairly easy ‘living resume’, that potential employers can see; so make your work history well written and polished (as it, treat it exactly like a resume).
Having a profile, even a new one, will almost certainly be a net positive over not having one, and it just gets better.
It’s worth noting that while a few people do actually use LI as a social network (with the joining groups and posting statuses/comments/links and so on), and that there may be a benefit of doing so if you’re actively job hunting (gets your name out more), most people seem to just basically treat it as a “here’s my employability credentials, click that button to message me with offers” site. It works too; I get regular offers despite having almost no activity on the site and indicating that I’m currently employed. It doesn’t seem to have Facebook’s “gotta have all the friends!” mentality so much, though.
You’ll probably find that connections will grow quickly. Pretty much any recruiter—either at a career fair or similar, or a headhunter looking for people online—will offer to connect, and it’s generally fine to connect with all your current colleagues and any past ones that have/had a non-negative association with you. I’ve got connections through my current employer, my past employers including internships, friends and faculty from university, people I met through my work (admittedly, as a consultant, I work with a lot of people in my field but outside of my company), people I met at conferences, and various recruiters who’ve tried to rope me in. Almost all of them added me first, not the other way around.
Be aware that it’s really easy to leak info that you would want to keep private. A few years ago, there were a bunch of interesting leaks out of big tech companies when employees posted stuff that they were working on before it became public. Yeah, you shouldn’t put still-confidential stuff on your resume anyhow, but much worse when it’s publicly searchable on the Internet...
This is not a legitimate concern (that is, “the way opposes your fear”). No one’s judging anyone (as far as I know) on the basis of how many connections they have.